If you are an educator or business trainer, you have probably heard all the talk about st Century Schools Social Software and e-Learning 

When the buzz dies down and it's time to do something for your organization, what do you want from an online learning system? Easy creation of courses from existing resources? Course content which can be re-used with different learners, including content from other vendors. Learner involvement? Enrollment and learner authentication which is simple yet secure? Intuitive online learner and teacher management features? An active support community to help solve problems and generate new ideas? Affordability? 

Introducing Moodle! Moodle is an alternative to proprietary commercial online learning solutions, and is distributed free under open source licensing. An organization has complete access to the source code and can make changes if needed. Moodle’s modular design makes it easy to create new courses, adding content that will engage learners. modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment  Many schools such as UCLA have extensively used Moodle to power their courses.

Moodle Architecture Activities are at the heart of a course management system. Moodle was designed by an educator and computer scientist, with “social constructionist” principles in mind. “Constructionism asserts that learning is particularly effective when constructing something for others to experience. This can be anything from a spoken sentence or an internet posting, to more complex artifacts like a painting, a house or a software package. The concept of social constructivism extends the above ideas into a social group constructing things for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings. When one is immersed within a culture like this, one is learning all the time about how to be a part of that culture, on many levels.” Martin Dougiamas Creator & Lead Developer 

Promoting Learner Involvement “A constructivist perspective views learners as actively engaged in making meaning, and teaching with that approach looks for what students can analyze, investigate, collaborate, share, build and generate based on what they already know, rather than what facts, skills, and processes they can parrot. Some of the tenets of constructivism in pedagogical terms include:” Students come to class with an established world-view, formed by years of prior experience and learning. Even as it evolves, a student’s world-view filters all experiences and affects their interpretations of observations. For students to change their world-view requires work. Students learn from each other as well as the teacher. Students learn better by doing. Allowing and creating opportunities for all to have a voice promotes the construction of new ideas. 

Getting Started Moodle has a "modular" design so adding the activities that form a course is a simple process: 1. Click the "Turn editing on" button at the top right of the course page. 2. Select an activity from the "Add an activity" dropdown menu.  The activity menu allows teachers to add assignments, lessons, and more. The resource menu enables teachers to add a page, link, and more.

Course Management Features - Modules Assignment Used to assign online or offline tasks; learners can submit tasks in any file format (e.g. MS Office, PDF, image, a/v etc.). Chat Allows real-time synchronous communication by learners. Choice Instructors create a question and a number of choices for learners; results are posted for learners to view. Use this module to do quick surveys on subject matter. Database Allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a bank of record entries about any conceivable topic.  Teachers can enter a description of the assignment and set how many points it is worth.

Course Management Features - Modules Forums Threaded discussion boards for asynchronous group exchange on shared subject matter. Participation in forums can be an integral part of the learning experience, helping students define and evolve their understanding of subject matter. Students are able to communicate amongst each other with the discussion board. 

Course Management Features - Modules Glossary Create a glossary of terms used in a course. Has display format options including entry list, encyclopedia, FAQ, dictionary style and more. Label Add descriptions with images in any area of the course homepage. Lesson Allows instructor to create and manage a set of linked "Pages". Each page can end with a question. The student chooses one answer from a set of answers and either goes forward, backward or stays in the same place in the lesson. Students are presented with an easy to use interface while browsing glossary words. 

Quiz Create all the familiar forms of assessment including true-false, multiple choice, short answer, matching question, random questions, numerical questions, embedded answer questions with descriptive text and graphics. Course Management Features - Modules Teachers have the ability to create many types of quizzes. They also are able to import questions from a variety of sources. 

Course Management Features - Modules Resource The primary tool for bringing content into a course; may be plain text, uploaded files, links to the web, Wiki or Rich Text (Moodle has built-in text editors) or a bibliography type reference. Survey This module aids an instructor in making online classes more effective by offering a variety of surveys (COLLES, ATTLS), including critical incident sampling. Workshop An activity for peer assessment of documents (Word, PP etc.) that students submit online. Participants can assess each other’s project. Teacher makes final student assessment, and can control opening and closing periods. Moodle supports adding math expressions to a Resource activity, using the built-in HTML editor. 

Creating learning content is only part of what a good course management system (CMS) must do. The CMS must manage learners in a variety of ways. Learner management includes: Access to information about learners in a course. Ability to segment participants into groups. Site, course and user calendar event scheduling. And so much more…e.g. applying scales to different learner activities, managing grades, tracking user access logs and uploading external files for use within the course etc. Learner Management Features 

Learner Management Features – Participants One click and you can view activity from all participants enrolled in the course. Learners create a personal profile that can include a picture, helping connect students socially in the online learning community. Learners complete a personal profile page that helps build the online learning community. Adding a picture and details to the profile creates a social connection. 

Learner Management Features - Groups Assigning learners to a group is a common practice in education and business. Moodle allows the course instructor to easily create group categories, and determine how members will interact with each other and within various activities. Creating distinct group names is easy. Learners and teachers are assigned to a group by clicking a single button. 

Learner Management Features - Calendar Keeping a calendar of events is important to both the learner and course instructor. Events can be created for different categories, including: Upcoming Events appear on the course homepage, alerting the learner across all courses they are enrolled in of different category events. Alerts are color-coded by category. Global events that appear in all courses (system admin). Course events set by an instructor. Group events set by instructor relative only to a group. User events set by learner (e.g. due dates, personal etc.). 

Learner Management Features - Roles Roles for specific participants can be defined for each course An admin account controls the creation of courses and creates teachers by assigning users to courses. Course creators can create courses, teach in them, and assign others to teacher roles. Teachers are a role in a specific course. Non-editing teacher roles are available for adjuncts, and part- time tutors. 

Learner Management Features - Blogs Blogs in Moodle are user based - each user has their own Blog. Admins, teachers, and students can create Tags - Admins can create site level tags, teachers can create Course level tags, and students can create their own list of tags. When a blog entry is created, a user can select which tags they wish to associate with their new entry. Multiple tags can be selected. Users can also select who they want the blog entry to be available to (depending on the blog visibility site setting).  Users can attach files to Blog posts. These posts are in HTML format, enabled users to insert images.

Learner Management Features – Admin The Administration control panel puts all important learner management functions a single click away. Teachers and Students can be manually enrolled or removed from a course. Configuration of course Backup and Restore is achieved on a single screen. Restoring an existing course or Uploading a file archive from storage is accomplished with a single mouse click. Moodle makes it easy to re-use and share courses with other teachers. Backup can include or exclude student files and course data. 

Learner Management Features - Scales Instructors may define custom Scales to be used for grading Forums and Assignments. Standard scales include assigning a value from 1-100% for each submission (or no grade), and indicating whether the learner was demonstrating one of three characteristics in the activity: Custom scales allow the instructor to fine tune their grading for specific content. Easily create several types of scales, and connect them with different activities you Add to the course. Shows mostly CONNECTED knowing. Shows mostly SEPARATE knowing. Equally separate and connected. 

Learner Management Features - Grades The Grades feature in Moodle provides a quick view of all Forum, Assignment, Quiz, Lesson and Workshop grades. The grading scale applied to a learner’s submission is shown, along with a cumulative total, on a single page. Grades can also be downloaded in Excel or plain text for inclusion into an existing electronic gradebook. 

Learner Management Features - Grades Viewing Assignment submissions and adding Grades and comments, are done from a single page that displays all enrolled students. Managing student submissions are done from one central screen. This cuts down on the time it takes to assess many students work. 

Learner Management Features - Logs Monitor when and what course resources the learner has accessed. Moodle's Logs provide detailed learner activity. Logs pin-point when actions are done. Easily locate specific course, student, date and module activity access.  Logs can be accessed from the “Reports” section.

Learner Management Features - Files Centrally locate all course resources within the Files area of Moodle so they are available when creating new activities. Files storage area resembles your computer, making it easy to add, move, zip and delete resources. 

Learner Management Features - Help An extensive Moodle Help file is a button click away. Courses include a Teacher only forum, where colleagues can collaborate on tasks and share ideas.  These buttons appear throughout your Moodle and leads to a help article regarding the topic. The help files cover a variety of topics and can be accessed by clicking the yellow button such as the one above.

Learner Experience - Login Learners find it easy to navigate a Moodle course homepage in their browser; intuitive “breadcrumb” links are always present. Login occurs on a familiar screen. Initial account set up may be handled by the learner or administrator.  Navigation bar provides breadcrumb links from course homepage to activities.

Learner Experience – Enrollment Keys Instructors can require an “enrollment key” to allow participation in a class. Enrollment keys are provided to learners separately from the log in process. Courses requiring an enrollment key are indicated in “Course categories” description. Course category displays descriptions of each course. Symbols on description page indicate when a course requires an enrollment key and allows Guest entry. Students see a list of courses they are enrolled in (My courses) on site homepage after login. 

Learner Experience – 24/7/365 Anywhere! Learners can select from 70 languages at Login Learners can login any time, anywhere to interact with coursework, and can specify the Time Zone and Language they wish to use. Moodle has interface support for over 70 languages. 

Learner Experience – Notification Rich text is sent to each learner “subscribed” to different Forums. When learners “subscribe” to forums they are notified by of new postings. Additionally, instructors can set notification for assignments. 

Over organizations in 204 countries had registered Moodle sites by January 2008 ( This number is growing by about 10% each month as educators and trainers learn the value of implementing open source Moodle. Moodle is an ideal online learning solution for: Who is Using Moodle? "My first live class just ended and it was a tremendous success, both in the behavior of the program and the quality and longevity of my participants. Moodle has been terrific to work with. Somehow it doesn't seem to be as tedious to work with as other courseware programs such as Blackboard and WebCT." - Paula Edmiston, Trainer K-12 Schools Colleges Universities Governmental Agencies Businesses Trade Associations Hospitals Libraries Employment Agencies 

Who Will Help You Use Moodle? Hundreds of knowledgeable open-source users have joined with Moodle developers in a community of learners. Meet a few new friends! 

Why Not Try Moodle Right Now? If your organization is ready or needs to support an online learning population, here is an opportunity to take your research to the next level. These Moodle sites are open for you to explore either as a learner, or teacher with course creator privileges. Free software, community, information: Commercial support and other services: Moodle demonstration site: Moodle documentation: 